Life After You
by Jameson Rook
Summary: "It's you and I, right or wrong, there's no other one after this time I've spent alone. It's hard to believe that a man with sight could be so blind, thinkin' about the better times, must have been out of my mind. So, I'm runnin' back to tell you all that I'm after is a life full of laughter. Without you, God knows what I'd do." Spoiler: "Hot Spot"


_**Disclaimer: Burn Notice and all of its characters belong to Matt Nix and the USA Network. **_

_** Spoilers for "Hot Spot" because this is one of my favorite scenes in the entire series so I feel like I need to infuse it with my own two cents. **_

**"It's you and I, right or wrong,**

**There's no other one after this time I've spent alone.**

**It's hard to believe that a man with sight could be so blind,**

**Thinkin' about the better times, must have been out of my mind.**

**So, I'm runnin' back to tell you all that I'm after is a life full of laughter.**

**Without you, God knows what I'd do.**

**All that I'm after is a life full of laughter, as long as I'm laughing with you.**

**I'm thinkin' that all that still matters is love ever after,**

**After the life we've been through, I know there's no life after you."**

**- "Life After You" Daughtry**

The sight of that black smoke billowing against the pale sky was the worst feeling that I had ever had in my life. The twist of anxiety in my stomach was enough to make me physically ill.

"_Fi!_" I screamed, clawing at the arms of the men trying to hold me back. I couldn't remember a time that I had ever felt more helpless than in that moment. I moved quickly back to the Charger, my phone pressed against my ear after I had punched in Fiona's cellphone number.

_"It's Fi. Leave a message."_ Shit.

"Fiona! Answer the phone! Please, call me back, Fi!" I eneded the call and immediately redialed the number several more times, but got the same result. "Fuck!" I barked and threw my phone into the passengers seat before slamming my foot onto the gas pedal. I raced around town, searching all of the places that Fiona could be, praying that I would walk into one of them and see her nursing a drink with that over confident smirk on her face that wordlessly questioned why it had taken me so long.

But that didn't happen. I had walked into every single one of her usual haunts and been greeted with nothing more than concerned looks and the occasional "can I help you, sir?" before I sprinted back out to the Charger and reluctantly steered it back towards the loft. The sky had broken open with the echo of dry lightning crackling through the air, and the rain had begun to pelt the car as I pulled into the drive. I stared forward, my face set in a grim line as I slammed my fist on the steering wheel.

Sucking in a ragged, deep breath, I slid out of the car into the pouring rain. The drops soaked through my thin t-shirt as I climbed the stairs. What the hell was I going to do without Fi? She was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and I didn't want to lose that. I _couldn't_ lose her.

I opened the door to the loft slowly and stepped out of the rain, though I probably wouldn't have noticed if it had been raining _inside_ the loft. I fell back against the wall, sucking in a few more ragged breaths as I tried to compose myself. I used to be a spy. I was supposed to be able to compartmentalize enough so that my emotions didn't get the best of my.

Then again, I also wasn't supposed to fall in love with an asset. An asset that had started dating Campbell just to prove a point and send jealously surging through my veins. But, I still loved her, reguardless of everything that we had ever been through.

"There you are. You have _got_ to get a landline in here." I spun on my heel when I heard the harmonic notes of her voice floating through the silence. She was leaning back against the workbench, her arms crossed over her chest.

My stomach dropped and the whirring of blood in my ears drowned out the explination that I was pretty sure she was giving. I couldn't seem to wrap my head around the fact that she was standing in my kitchen as if she belonged there (I knew that she belonged there, she always had) and as if she wasn't supposed to be _dead_.

I struggled to find the words that I was looking for to say something, _anything_ other than the choked feeling that had burrowed itself into my throat. The sting of tears welling in my eyes at the sight of her. She quirked an eyebrow at me, confusion written on her face.

My legs moved forward slowly of their own accord. The sight of her standing in my kitchen felt too realistic, even though I knew it couldn't be real. She was in the house when it was engulfed in flames. There was no way that she could be standing there with that adorable pout that I loved so much. I stopped a few inches ahead of her and could feel the heat radiating off of her body as it licked against my rain cooled skin. She was awfully warm for a hallucination.

Raw fear clawed at the back of my throat as it mixed with the pain of loss that had been coursing through my veins since I saw the serpentine flames licking the sky. There had been very few times in my life that I had felt that kind of unadulterated terror. I saw the flash of recognition in Fi's eyes seconds before she spoke.

"Michael? You didn't think that..." She trailed off and the knife that had been stuck in my chest twisted in another hundred and eighty degree spin. I stepped even closer, my shaking fingers reaching out to brush over the silky, ivory skin of her face.

It felt real enough, but I needed more confirmation. My eyes flicked to hers briefly before I leaned in and placed a tentative kiss against her lips. I couldn't suppress the choked sob against her lips. When I pulled away, I glanced down at her, my muscles quivering under my soaked clothing.

I pulled her into another, deeper kiss, my teeth scraping over her bottom lip. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her to my chest, revealing in the warmth that seeped through my shirt.

It wasn't until her hands slid over my back that I realized that she truly was there. She wasn't gone, and she was kissing me like I was air that she needed to live. Her scent, her touch, her taste, all of it was running rampant through my veins when I hooked my hands under her legs and carried her to the bed.

It seemed as though we had always been dancing around one another. I would look left, and she would turn right, but we had finally caught up to one another, and we knew all of the steps by heart as we moved to the silent rhythm of love that had always been there. It just hadn't been loud enough for us to hear until something this catastrophic was there to show me what I would be losing if I let her slip thorugh my fingers.

In the dark apartment, with the pounding of the rain on the roof, I finally let the three words that I had been waiting to say since the day that I had laid eyes on her. I don't think that I could have imagined a more beautiful sight than the way that she looked at me when she replied "I...I love you too, Michael."

That night, with her body curled around mine, I stared at the ceiling, and wondered, for the first time since I had woken up in that dingy motel room with Fiona staring at me, about what it would be like if I just dropped the entire 'burn notice' deal and just spent the rest of my life making love to Fiona and living out a life with my family.

After all, love was what really mattered when it came right down to it.


End file.
